The waddle is almot gone!!

Hey everyone, so it's been awhile since we had a post on here. We have had a lot going on here lately...

Thursday June 11th my (Jessica) parents drove up to Auburn. That Friday they rode with some very good family friends over to Montezuma, GA where Dave and I met them to go eat at Yoder's (YUM!), pick blueberries, and strawberries. We had a great day together. We all went back to Auburn for the evening. Where Dave and I raced on 4-wheelers for a good hour or two. (Man, I didn't realize that it would make my arms so sore!!)

Saturday, June 12 we all separated. I rode home with Mom and Dad, and Dave went back home. Sunday was my Goddaughters 4th birthday party. It was great to see them again (they have finally moved back to Alabama after being in Maryland for 4 years). We had a great time and a good time catching up that evening in the pool when the kids were in bed.

Monday morning is the first day to the real reason that I came to Mobile. It's has been about 8 years coming. 4:30am... I'm all packed as well as Mom too, and we head to Springhill Memorial Hospital. Mom is FINALLY having hip replacement surgery at 7am. I must admit I was super excited for her, but nervous too. I don't deal well with hospitals and/or doctors of any sort well.

10:00ish am the doctor comes out and said that surgery went great, and not a lot of blood lost either. (This is supposedly one of the (if not the) bloodiest surgeries, and she was happy to not have to get a blood transfusion, even though the blood donor is a great family friend.) We were able to see her finally around 10:30 and she was up and awake and in such high spirit! I was RELIEVED and super excited now for her road to recovery! She was even excited that she was already able to move her feet (both legs) some too.

Surgery day was good, she wasn't able to get out of the bed, slept a lot, in good spirits, was on a liquid diet, and had no appetite. I had planned on staying with her (well once I saw they only had two strait upright (hard to get comfortable in) chairs, I kind of had to retract on my commitment to staying every night LOL!!) I started to sleep in the chairs bumped together, but turns out a WONDERFUL nurse brought me a couch that pulled out into a bed after seeing me all crunched up into those two chairs. It wasn't my bed, but it was good enough for me to stay every night with mom. (She didn't ask me to but I volunteered and I know it was comforting to her to always have someone to talk to when she was awake or help when she needed something).

Tuesday... the next day after surgery... they had her get out of bed already that day and walk. She was so nervous, but she did great. She managed to walk half way down the hall too the 2nd time walking. Each day after that the added different exercises and she walked a bit farther.

Thursday she was released to come home, a bit nervous about it, but she chose home versus a therapy center. Her therapist and nurse came out right away Friday. They both come 3 days a week and are wonderful ladies. They each come out 3 days a week (tomorrow MIGHT be the last day for the nurse if all goes well in her follow up appointment with the doctor on Monday 6/29)

Each time the therapist would come out it would be the same thing... she's doing great, keep doing your exercises... well one time she changed her exercises and had her doing them standing up instead of sitting down because it was easier for Mom to do.

Here is the absolute exciting news!! Today, 6/25, 10 days after hip replacement surgery, Mom was pretty much walking on her own!! She had a cane/folded up walker beside her for security. She got up and sat down in her rocking lazy boy chair ALONE!! Neither of those has she done before today. She's doing great. I'm super proud of her, and just wanted to share our joys!! We all have appreciated all of the prayers, calls, concerns, flowers, and cards. They have really helped to keep Mom's spirits up. I know in the hospital everyone said that we had the prettiest room for all the beautiful bouquets.

I know many might remember how she walked (or as some of us called it waddled)... it's almost gone. It's still there a LITTLE bit but that's only out of insecurity in walking, and still a habbit from before too.

SO that has pretty much been my past two weeks. It's been hard, I'm not going to lie, Mom and I are usually ALWAYS going and doing something somewhere!! However, to fight the cabin fever boredom, I brought home enough school work with me to be content for however long I needed to stay and that has kept me pretty busy. I met up with my best friends Casey and Mandy last night for a girls night. We played on the Wii and watched a movie. It was great!! Then next week I'm going to escape to the beach with Casey and Mandy for a day. All and all I'm super proud of her and I'm just thankful that I was able to come home and help her. I know Dad would have taken vacation, but that's truly not a vacation, and I'm sure Mom and Dad both would rather use that vacation time to go somewhere and show off that new hip later on this year!! I have even surprised myself in what I have been able to do to help her. I've been changing her surgery dressings. (It's NASTY gross, but I haven't gagged yet! and the STAPLES, not stitches, come on Monday hopefully).

Anyways I've been meaning to post this, but haven't yet. Bless you and thank you if you were able to read all of it!

Peace our for now!! Until next time...

Lost at home...

So... I (Jessica) just got off of the phone and SO have to blog about this conversation...


Dave: I have no idea where I am


Jess: What?!?!


Dave: Yea, I'm past the barb wire fence (which is the farthest point of our 2 acre lot, by the way). I thought I was headed home, but no, I'm not.


Jess: Do you need me to go outside and scream for you to follow my voice?


Dave: nah, I think I know where I am now


Jess: (Thinking, oh lord... who knows what direction he's going into now!) Ok well... call me if you need me to come out and find you!





LOL!! He must have been so into his spraying the brush in the woods that he didn't have a clue which direction he was going. He's doing an awesome job by the way. Here is a before pic of the back yard,
When he's finished I'll post an after. We're clearing out the weeds/brush/vines/baby trees out until the BIG tree line in the back. Right now the yard pretty much ends at the shed, but he's taking it back to the tree line.


PS: He just came home!! YAY!!! His first words said with a grin "It's easy to get turned around out there!"

Peace Out! Until later...

Our FIRST blog...

Well... what should I (Jessica) say? I'm actually not even sure if I'm doing this whole 'blog' thing correctly. LOL! This is just a test run obviously, but I might as well make some good use of it if you're going to read this. I don't want to waste your time.

Since the wedding... WOW, it's already been 7 months! We spent our honeymoon in beautiful Negril, Jamaica! I didn't want to come home. I'll go tomorrow if someone will send me!! I LOVED it there!

Other than that our life has been pretty smooth. I just finished up my 4th year of teaching. I'm still in the same school with the same WONDERFUL team members! We have put the house up for sale. (ha ha I know!) We are not contemplating about taking it down, but we're going to wait until Dave has a job first. If his job has a long commute then we'll leave it up and hope it sells. If not then we're going to take it down, fix it up, unpack wedding gifts, and enjoy it for a few years to come. (We'll see... I just want to know if we're leaving it up or not?!?!!)

Dave is still searching for a job, anyone know of anything?!?! We're open for suggestions and contacts!! We're staying positive and taking it all one day at a time. If anything this has brought us closer. We have become more inventive of how to spend our weekends together and have entertaining cheap/free fun too. I am cooking more!! :) We really needed to become more frugal with our spending a while ago, but never did. Now we HAVE to! :)

Well I going to get some sleep now. We had a very productive day of lawn mowing, house cleaning, grocery shopping, and laundry!! I love productive days!!

Peace Out! Until next time...